A Complicated Kindness

twenty-four

It was time to make Ray’s birthday dinner. It wasn’t much of anything but it was very elegant in its nothingness. Paper-thin crêpes with a fine syrupy drizzle, and cantaloupe. I dimmed the lights and closed the curtains and lit a couple of scented candles and put on Tash’s record of Keith Jarrett playing a live concert somewhere in Sweden.

I gave my dad a green ceramic frog that goes on the outdoor sprinkler tap and some goofy-looking socks for his golf clubs and a bag of Glad Garbage Bags for the dump and a new shirt from Schlitzking Clothing that had a special section in the front pocket for a pen. Then I brought out a cake I’d made called One Two Three Four Cake with a bunch of candles on it and a sparkler in the middle. Sorry, I said, I couldn’t afford forty-three. But I sang. And the whole time he had the sweetest smile on his face and he kept rolling his shirt sleeves farther and farther up his arms and then when I was finished singing he blew out the candles and I said no girlfriends, and he said nope and then I took the cake back to the counter and cut us both giant pieces.

It was the same cake my mom had baked for me when I suffered my first major disappointment, at the age of four. My grandpa, my mom’s dad, had died and I missed him a lot so one day I decided to write him a letter in heaven, something like: Dear Grandpa. I hope you are having fun. I am having fun. I miss you. I love you. Please write me back when you get this. And then on a very windy day I took it outside and stood on the back steps and threw it up into the wind so that it could be carried up to my gramps in the sky. I watched it blow around for a while and then sure enough, the wind took it straight up to God. Every day I’d sit on those stupid steps for hours waiting for my grandpa to drop me a letter. And then one day I went outside and there it was sitting in the middle of the yard and I was really excited and happy and grabbed it and went running inside and showed it to my mom and she read it to me. Grandpa was fine and feeling good and missing me too. He said he’d have a place all ready for me to live in when I got there but that wouldn’t be for a long, long time so I should just forget about it and have fun with other kids and run around and play and not worry. Or words to that effect.

About a week later my mom and I were getting out of the car and I saw a scrunched-up piece of paper wedged against the fence by our driveway and I ran over to it and picked it up and smoothed it out and realized it was my letter to my grandpa. How can this be here? I asked my mom. It’s supposed to be in heaven. That means he didn’t get it, did he? I started to cry and my mom took my hand and we went inside and sat down at the kitchen table and she told me that she had written that letter supposedly from my grandpa because she couldn’t bear to see me so sad and hopeful at the same time. She told me it was impossible to send a letter to heaven because the wind does not go there. Heaven is always calm, with no wind. She said other stuff but I didn’t really understand it. I understood there was no wind in heaven. That’s partly why I love the wind that blows around in this town. It makes me feel like I’m in the world. And then she and I baked a One Two Three Four Cake together and during that time I stopped crying and feeling sad and even had a little fun especially when we surprised Tash and my dad with the cake when they got home from school.

My dad said thank you very, very much Nomi, this is quite a surprise. And I said you’re very, very welcome. Happy birthday, Dad. And then he took off his old shirt and put on the new one and I gave him a pen from the drawer to put in the special pocket and he said look at that.

We ate our cake and smiled at each other while Keith Jarrett played and moaned and when I asked him if he wanted another piece he said no thank you, then I will have eaten to superfluity. Afterwards we carried the TV outside and plugged it into the outlet near the garage and sat in lawn chairs watching a baseball game in Detroit while the sun set without us noticing. We had one of our usual discussions about that particular phenomenon.

Hey Dad, it’s dark, did you notice the sun setting? No, did you? No. Weird. Very. He told me it had been a super birthday, just super. He said I spoiled him.

After the game my dad went to bed and I called Travis and he came to pick me up in the truck. I helped him paint the goat barn red.

We were getting so much paint on our clothes that we decided to take them off. I let him paint weird hieroglyphic things all over my body with a big fat exterior brush and I put a target on his ass. Then we put plastic down on the front seat of his dad’s truck and drove to The Golden Comb’s place and hosed ourselves off with purple gas. Travis chased me around for a while with a lighter, flicking it and trying to set me on fire. We drove to the pits and rinsed the purple gas off in the water which made it beautiful and we floated around in gassy rainbows for hours talking about stuff and lighting the gas with Travis’s lighter so it was like we were in hell. Rainbow pools of fire in the pits, the smell of smoking stubble, the hot wind, dying chickens, the night, my childhood.

How do you remember a town that’s not supposed to exist in the world?

Went home. Came down. Got sad. There was a note on the kitchen table. Nomi: Any plans for after graduation? That’s how we communicated large, vague ideas. On paper that can burn up in less than one second. I stared at the words for an exorbitantly long time.

Then I wrote. Dear Dad: I intend to become a model of courage and dignity.

I went into the bathroom, puked, passed out in my bed, and briefly died, until the sun rose once again reminding me of renewed hope and promise and other abiding things. I needed to find something large and dark to put in my window or I would slowly die of fatigue.

I sat down on my French horn on the corner of Second and Kroeker and lit a Sweet Cap and wondered why I hadn’t practised more. The French horn, when played well, is the most beautiful instrument in the world, according to Tash. That was the reason why I picked it. She chose the flute because she dug the way the case looked like it could also contain a sawed-off shotgun. She used to play “Oh Shenandoah” in her room with her blinds down, burning cones of incense in a teacup. I’d lie in bed and listen to the funny way she had of breathing while she played.

It was so hot I could see the heat. I could feel my internal organs warming up. I wondered if I could boil in my own blood. I heard the second bell but I couldn’t move. I was moulded to my French horn case like the Ken doll is to his underwear. I leaned over and fell off my case hoping that the hard impact with the concrete would encourage some kind of re-entry into the world but all it did was hurt me.

A woman came out of an aluminum house and asked me in the language of our people if I was all right and I thought about the question for a while and then said yo, yo, fane, schmack, and a few other words I could remember from talking with my grandma on the rare occasions when she was sober and we were not guarding her from the crabapple tree. Zeia gute, danke, I said, waving.

The woman frowned. Yo? she asked.

Oba yo! I said. She went inside and slammed the door while I rose to my hands and knees and prayed for a cloud, one cloud. I’d plant a church somewhere in Africa for one fucking cloud. Why do you hate me? I cried out, yeah, cried out, to the sun. I heard a locking kind of click coming from the door vicinity of the aluminum house.

Dialogue with school secretary regarding my fifty-dollar deposit for the French horn:

— They said I’d get the fifty bucks when I returned the instrument.

— We issue cheques upon graduation, taking into account overdue library books, things like that.

— What if I don’t graduate?

— Then I suppose you won’t get your deposit back.

— But what does one have to do with the other?

— I don’t know, but that’s our policy.

— But it doesn’t make any sense. Here’s the French horn so fifty bucks please.

— I’m sorry.

— Give it to me. Please?

— I can’t. I’m sorry.

— Please? I don’t understand. I got here. I walked…it shouldn’t…oh God, please?

— I can’t. Our policy is…

— I know, I know, but I need that money. I got here…you have no idea…of…just please?

— No, I’m sorry and I’d suggest you get to your first class. You’re already twenty minutes late.

— Oh sorry, I know, okay…sorry.

— You can leave that French horn, Nomi.

— No, I’m taking it.

— But the school policy is…

— No, no, that’s okay, I’m taking it.

— I’m afraid you’ll have to leave it here in the office.

— Don’t be afraid.

— Nomi!

— Shhhhh…

— Nomi!

I don’t remember much after that except that I picked some purple flowers in the ditch along the number twelve with the intention of trading them for drugs. When I woke up I was lying on my own couch. Except that my couch was in The Golden Comb’s trailer. I still had the flowers in my hand.

Should we put those in water, asked The Comb. I handed them to him and he walked over to the kitchen. He was wearing his Tiger Claw School of Kung Fu T-shirt. The trailer was pretty much one room with sections.

Do you mind if I ask you something? I said. Where’d you get this couch? The Comb told me he’d bought it off my dad in the middle of the night a few days ago. He was sitting on it in the front yard like at three or four in the morning with a suit and tie on like he was waiting for me or something, said The Comb.

I said yeah and nodded and then Eldon said barley sandwich? Old socks? And I said cool, thank you, Eldon. He said donesville and headed for the fridge.

The Comb sat in a La-Z-Boy folding laundry and nodding moodily to The Dark Side of the Moon. I said: I was gonna get the deposit on that thing and, like fifty bucks, for shit…and then, but they said no, so.

Oh yeah, said The Comb. So, no dough?

Kind of yeah, no, I said. I kind of got those…flowers there for…I picked them and…hoped. This is not a smooth transaction, I thought to myself. The Comb closed his eyes and grooved for a while. I looked over at the worn-out shiny part of the sofa cushion where my dad had put his head when he napped. Where he had dreamed away the darkness. Eldon came back with my beer and pretended to open it with his eye.

That’s so fu—…that’s…wow, I said, smiling up at him like he was Santa Claus. Then he sat down in a different La-Z-Boy chair and I drank my beer and tried to keep flies from landing on the opening of the bottle and stared at that part of the sofa that my dad had worn in with his head.

So! said The Comb, finally. What are we gonna do, Nomi? I smiled and shrugged and then Eldon came up with the idea of strip Scrabble but I said noooooo thanks.

Ordinary Scrabble? he asked.

I’m pretty bad with uh…words, I said. The Comb said that Eldon kept track of his scores and studied words every evening.

That’s freaky, I said and Eldon said why is that freaky, why is that freaky?

And The Comb said whoah, Silver, she means it’s interesting.

Then Eldon looked over at my French horn and said we could keep that in exchange, what’s it worth?

Nothing, I said. It’s really pretty useless. I rest on it sometimes. We all stared at it for a few seconds and then The Comb asked me how desperate I was.

Well quite severely so I guess, I said.

So we keep that baby, he said, and you go away happy. Happy? Eldon was firing up a shiny blue blowtorch and The Comb was stroking the lid of an old Sucrets tin.

Well? asked Eldon.

I was studying that word in my head, I said.

What word? he asked.

Happy, I said.

Are you mocking me? he asked. The Comb lifted his hand and glared at Eldon and said give it up, man.

You know how it is when you say a word over and over and over in your head? They looked at me. I put my hand on the sofa cushion and felt its warmth and worn-away feeling. I’ll just take my French horn now and go, I said. No offence or anything. I mean you guys are the best, thanks for the beer and sitting here inside, it’s so…round…and shady. Whew. I smiled and mimed like I was wiping sweat off my forehead. Bye guys, I said. Nice couch. And closed the screen door really, really softly.

I sat on the church steps and stared at the cars on Main Street. I got up and walked over to The Trampoline House for a few minutes of uninterrupted jumping. I sat in a wooden swing set in Travis’s backyard. My French horn was becoming intolerably heavy. I walked home down the highway, six inches away from the speeding semis carrying loads of doped-up livestock. When I got to my house I found my dad at the kitchen table looking at a pile of coupons that all advertised half-price fabric softener.

I guess whole stacks of papers that all say the same thing really interest you, eh? I said. He looked up and smiled and lifted his hand like a traffic cop.

How goes the battle? he asked. That was one of his favourite questions. I tilted my head and smiled grimly. Not yet time for the white flag I hope, he said.

Hell no, captain, I said. He didn’t like the word hell but he kind of liked the word captain although he probably associated it with the word mutiny.

They called, he said. You have your driver’s test tomorrow at six o’clock at the arena.

I’ll need the car then, I said. Don’t sell it.

What’s for supper? he asked. Things starting with J? K?

I went into the garage to get some stuff from the freezer but then remembered that the freezer was gone. There was a three-by-six-foot rectangle of clean garage floor where it had once been. I went back inside and sat down across from my dad and said: What are you doing?

He said, we don’t need such a large freezer. He blinked from behind the glass. His eyes were so green and pretty.

Dad, I said, do you even know what fabric softener is? He looked at his stack of coupons and sighed. We need…he didn’t finish. We sat together quietly staring at the coupons as if they were showing signs of coming out of a long coma.

Finally I said we should do something fun tonight and he said how about the Demolition Derby.

It was nice leaning up against the fence with him at the old fairgrounds watching cars smash the shit out of each other and then come back for more, smoke puffing out around their hoods and doors missing. My dad was the only person at the fairgrounds wearing a suit and tie, of course. During the intermission we walked over to the ditch by the highway to watch some boys do jumps with their mini-bikes. And we counted cars with American plates — twenty-seven. On their way to watch The Mouth read Revelations by candlelight in the fake church while the people of the real town sat in a field of dirt cheering on collisions.

Afterwards he let me practise my driving. I drove around and around the outskirts of town on Townline Road and Garson and back up the number twelve to Kokomo Road, like I was a real thorough or possibly forgetful dog marking my territory. My dad asked me what those fires were in the bushes off behind Suicide Hill and I told him: kids. Kids hanging out. Staying out of the wind, drinking beer, pairing off, and hoping to have a little fun before that endless swim-a-thon in the Lake of Fire. My dad asked me please not to schput—an old word meaning don’t make fun of eternal damnation and other religion-based themes.

I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t get my hands to turn the steering wheel towards home. So I just kept driving around and around the same roads and my dad kept staring out the window like he’d never seen any of it before.